CONCORD, New Hampshire (LifeSiteNews) – Two separate attempts to amend the New Hampshire Constitution with “rights” to abortion failed in the state legislature this month, ensuring neither will be put to a vote of the Granite State’s residents this fall.
The proposed amendment would have simply declared that “an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed.”
Its failure follows the defeat of another proposed amendment in the New Hampshire House that was worded somewhat more specifically. It would have declared that “Every individual has a fundamental right to abortion,” which the state “cannot prohibit, restrict, delay, or penalize this right prior to 24 weeks unless it is justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” At 24 weeks, abortion could be banned unless “in the professional judgment of an attending physician” it was deemed “necessary.”
While the first amendment was rejected by a full majority, the House voted 193-184 in favor of the latter, which fell short of the three-fifths margin amendments need under the New Hampshire Constitution.
Abortion is currently legal up to 24 weeks in New Hampshire, but the abortion lobby argued the practice needed to be insulated from the possibility of future legislation. Democrat state Sen. Becky Whitley claimed she was fighting “for the little girls ahead of me who now have less rights than I have, rights that led me directly to this chamber, and helped me build a career a family and life of my choice and of my dreams,” the Associated Press reported.
The outcome spares New Hampshire pro-lifers from having to worry, at least for now, about similar setbacks experienced by counterparts in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Vermont, and Ohio since November 2022, where activists failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones at the ballot box. Such battles are underway in Arkansas, Florida, and Maryland.
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, with available data so far indicating that now-enforceable pro-life laws could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 abortions a year.
Since such reforms were made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, pro-aborts have deployed numerous tactics to keep the abortion industry going, including easy interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, and making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors.
Among their most successful have been state constitutional amendments, which if enacted effectively insulate abortion on demand from future state legislation and can only be overridden by a federal abortion ban, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box.
President Joe Biden has called on Congress to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, which would not only restore but expand the Roe status quo by making it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws. The 2024 elections will determine whether Democrats retain the White House and keep or gain enough seats in Congress to make that happen.